The Phone Bum Story

This is something a little special — a New York City startup story, if you will. It’s about Phone Bum. Phone Bum allows you to borrow phones for a reasonable monthly rate. It seems like most of their customers are those who had broken their own phones, or lost it. We used Phone Bum for something entirely different.

Back in July 2015 when I was initially building out the Croissant mobile app, I was using my iPhone and an Android emulator to test out key features. The emulator was useful, but to truly test the app, I was going to need an Android phone. Unfortunately, myself and my three co-founder all happen to be iPhone users. I was tossing around the idea of just buying a used phone, but we just didn’t have the funds.

By a stroke of luck, Zoltan and Adam ran into Serg, the founder of Phone Bum, at a tech meetup event during this time. They exchanged cards and somehow Serg’s card ended up on our desk at TEEM. I was sitting there a few days later and noticed the card. I wasn’t in the mood to do work so I thought I would check out their website for fun. While browsing the site, something clicked in my head. Phonebum sounded like the perfect solution for my Android testing conundrum. So I went ahead and browsed their selection of both Apple and Android phones. A few coffee-fueled minutes later, I ended up ordering their Samsung Galaxy Note III. The monthly rate came out to around $32, including taxes. 2 hours later, Serg’s team member Adrian hand-delivered the slighty-used phone to me himself.

We have been using the Note III to test our mobile app for about 6 months now. There have been no problems or issues with the phone at all. I never activated the cell service since I just used wifi for testing, but I would assume it’s simple to do with their help.